While Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas governor, failed presidential candidate, Fox employee, and fundamentalist Christian minister, presents as an aw shucks kind of guy, his views on LGBT issues dovetail nicely with that of the Taliban. As shown by News Hounds Alex’s detailed report on Huckabee’s pals at the “Take Back America” conference, Huckabee certainly pals around with extremists such as Brian Camenker of “Mass Resistance,” a group whose virulent homophobic comments and actions have earned it the “honor” of being named a hate group by the SPLC. As his fellow militant homophobic fellow travelers, Huckabee has also made some rather nasty homophobic comments. But rather than apologize for these comments, Huckabee, in his treacly, sweet, “Christian,” way, finds a way to blame others for his “Freudian slips” which, while very offensive to the LGBT community, score Minister Huckabee lots of points with his American Taliban base. Why golly gosh, gee whiz, I thought that Christian conservatives were all about folks taking responsibility for their actions. Silly me!

Earlier this year Huckabee compared same sex couples to drug addicts, those who engage in incest, and those who believe in polygamy in an interview with a reporter from the College of New Jersey magazine, “The Perspective.” In articulating why he didn’t support the now passed Arkansas legislation allowing gay couples to adopt, he attacked gay families when he said "…Children are not puppies. This is not a time to see if we can experiment and find out, how does this work?" But rather than apologize for this offensive and ill informed statement, he went on Sean Hannity’s show and blamed the reporter for misrepresenting what he said. But Huckabee did tell Hannity that when he talked about his “contentious” interview with openly gay Rosie O’Donnell, during which he said that he doesn’t “judge gay people,” she was polite. So there, it’s all good!!

Recently, in the "New Yorker," in claiming his respect for gays (damning with faint praise or praising with faint damns?) Huck said that he has had gay workers and that he “accepts” them. But after this bit of sweetness, he continued: “I do believe that God created male and female and intended for marriage to be the relationship of the two opposite sexes. Male and female are biologically compatible to have a relationship. We can get into the ick factor, but the fact is two men in a relationship, two women in a relationship, biologically, that doesn’t work the same.” Not surprisingly, this bit of homophobia earned Huck a great deal of criticism from the LGBT community. So in typical Huckabee fashion, he isn’t apologizing but absolving himself of responsibility by asserting that gays say “ick factor” too!

Huckabee is now claiming, on his Huc Pac site, that his icky comments reflected not a “personal aversion” but “rather a reference to an established phrase used mostly from same-sex marriage advocates and militants.” (Really? I didn’t think Huck pals around with gays so go figure). He cites a University of Chicago professor, Dr. Martha Nussbaum who, according to Huckabee, is “credited with applying the phrase to the GLBT community” in her “professional writings.” He adds that the phrase was not his and has been in use since the 90’s. He references an article in which Nussbaum is interviewed and says that the author “even put 'Ick Factor' in the title.” He states that he stands by his “statement, and the misrepresentations of those who seek to dishonestly distort my views expose their duplicity and hypocrisy.” He's also not apologizing to Professor Nussbaum who demands that he does so as she clearly did not apply "the phrase to the GLBT community" and Huckabee's description of her work implies that she thinks gays are disgusting. (Huckabee's position?)

During his interview, yesterday, with Chris Wallace, Huckabee continued to defend his “ick” comment. Huckabee chuckled as Wallace read a quote from the Human Rights Campaign which criticized Huckabee: “And ick is certainly an appropriate way to describe Mr. Huckabee’s mind going to sex when all that we are asking for is our equality. Ick indeed.” While correctly noting (without explaining the context) that Nussbaum used the term to describe “projected disgust,” (attitude of insecure heterosexuals towards gay sex) he added that the phrase came from Nussbaum’s interview with a gay magazine and that the interviewer “coined the phrase” – not him – and that the phrase is “used in the gay community.” And then, in a comment reminiscent of right wing indignation about how the black community uses the “N word” but non blacks can't (and there is a large body of sociological interpretation on that) he said “But somehow it’s OK if they talk about it; but if someone else talks about it, it’s off bounds.” He then referenced an article from the uber right wing “American Spectator” in which the author does “a wonderful analysis of the hypocrisy of those who want to, on one hand, push this issue; but they really don’t want their own discussion to be brought into the public square. It’s a little disingenuous on their part…” Huck claimed that “it’s not a big issue for him” but that he’s “standing with" the majority of Americans who support traditional marriage. (and obviously “traditional” divorce!) Without noting that gay marriage is legal in some states, he cited the states where same sex marriage lost at the ballot.

Comment: I know a lot of gay people and the term “ick factor,” to describe gay sex, is not part of the lexicon. And excuse me, Minister Huckabee, but your use of the term was not as part of a psychological analysis of homophobia but in conjunction with your comment about sexual apparatus - which appears to demonstrate your “projected disgust” about gay sex and thus, your homophobia. (What is it with evangelical obsession with sex? Aren’t relationships supposed to be about love and trust?) As Fred Sainz, from the Human Rights Campaign says, “ick, indeed!